Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Now here's a great kit to help you teach your kids about Egypt and the pyramids. Usborne is known for it's wonderful array of history books for kids. They have a whole collection of neat works on Ancient Egypt. This year Usborne came out with the Pyramid Excavation Adventure Kit. Kids love it!

Kids get to be a junior acheologist by excavating the treasures found within the Egyptian pyramids. The kit also includes the book Who Built the Pyramids? which teaches kids all about the Ancient Egyptians and how they built the pyramids.

This is a great kit for any kid interested in egypt, pyramids, and archeology. It's also a great kit to use in your home school curriculum when studying Ancient Egypt.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

My kids just love penguins, as I am sure many of your kids do too. They just love the Penguins IR book published by Usborne Books. The book is all about the different types of penguins all over the world. They have two favorite parts in this book:

1. Where they show baby penguin growing inside the egg; and

2. How patchy and awful baby penguins look when they are in their 6th month of life here on earth.

This is an amazing book that teaches kids information about penguins that they won't get anywhere else. It includes a penguin facts page, glossary of penguin terms and a quiz. It's also Internet Related (IR) which means if you go to Usborne's quicklinks site at www.usborne-quicklinks.com, you will find kid approved sites on penguins. Just type in the name of the book and it will take you to some great penguin sites.

This book is great for kids who love penguins. It's also an informative book for kids who need or want to learn a little bit more about our fellow web-footed friends.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales is a must have for any child who is just about ready to start reading. Actually it's a great book for those who are younger to have read to them, and for those kids are early readers.

This book is great! It's a dual reader - which means it has easy text on the top of the page and a little bit harder text on the bottom of the page. That way, when Mary is starting to read, she can read the easy text at the top, and as her reading ability progresses she can start reading the text on the bottom too. This works great when you have two kids with two different reading levels. One can read the top portion, and the other the bottom portion. Another neat thing about the duel reading is that you can follow the story line whether you read just the top text or just the bottom text or both. Also, it's nice for mom and dad too - they can read the shorter version or the longer version based on how exhausted mom or dad is.

A CD is also included. The CD reads the stories to your child. I know my daughter loves to sit in bed at night after our own story time and have the CD read the stories to her. I think this really helped her when she was first starting to learn to read too. She also likes to bring the CD along in the car just to listen to the stories.

There are 20 stories in the Farmyard Tales Series. Each is included in this book. And each story starts the exact same way: "This is Apple Tree Farm . . . ". Repetitive text helps kids start to learn the words to the first page of each story pretty quickly.

Find the duck! Kids love to look for the duck that is on every single page of this book. Illustrated by Steven Cartwright, he hid a tiny little duck on each page of his books for the kids to find. This activity is great, and the kids just squeal when they find that duck!

As mentioned above, there are 20 Farmyard Tales stories in this combined volume book. Individually, each Farmyard Tale book is 6.95. The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales is only 24.99 so that saves you $94.00. That's a HUGE savings! Plus, this is a book that your kids will want to keep to pass on down to their own children.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

This month Children's Activities is giving away a Going to the Doctor Kid Kit. This kit includes Usborne's Going to the Doctor book which is part of the First Experiences series. It takes kids on a journey through a typical visit with the doctor. For those kids not used to going to the doctor yet, this book will ease their mind about the experience. In fact, after they get to pretend play with all the doctor tools, they may be excited to go. This book is illustrated by Stephen Cartwright so that means there's a little duck to find on every page. Kids just love trying to find that duck!

Kids love pretend play. This kit includes all the doctor tools they need to be the doctor in your family. It contains a stethoscope, thermometer, reflex hammer, mouth mirror, otoscope, play syringe, glasses, and a prescription pad. My daughter has enjoyed this book and kit for almost three years now. It's funny to hear her in her room taking care of her sick dolls and calling them Jenny and Jack (the names of the kids in the book).

If you'd like to win a Going to the Doctor Kid Kit for your child, please comment below and let me know a little about your aspiring doctor. Make sure you include your email so I can contact you if you are the winner. Winner will be chosen randomly at noon on Oct. 20th.